My name is Vladimir and my professional background is 3D/2D artist, animator and illustrator. Ive worked on the Genesis Rising video game back in the day (published in 2007), tho due to some personal stuff and family reasons, Ive not been able to move to another country which had better game industry opportunities. So after that Ive worked as freelancer for a decade, unfortunately for me because if Ive worked in some gaming company I would be project leader/lead artist by now lol. Never the less Ive managed to scoop up great deal of knowledge and experience working as freelancer on various projects for people around the world.

Sorry for my rambling on, anw, I've played Daggerfall when it came out back in `96 and really enjoyed and have quite fond memories of it. This brings a lot of pleasant feelings for me.

Ive mentioned to Gav some ideas and posted him links for some demos to illustrate my proposal. He was kind to forward me here and asked me to introduce my self and write down all I have in my mind considering this nice little project.

My suggestion is that maybe (maybe), we can make it a little better as a whole. Dont worry, Im not talking about -remake- lol, which would mean that it is completely redesigned and new game with all new and moderns standards. I am more talking about sort of -redo- or overhaul, it would be like a kind of version v1.5. Which means to retain original style, atmosphere, gameplay and just to elevate graphics and whole system a little bit, but the core to remain the same. If its changed too much, it will brake in a way, because it will stop being what it was and why people loved it. So, one needs to be very careful in this way. I could write whole master thesis just on the subject of doing “remakes”, prequels, sequels and why they dont work if bend it too far.

Ok, Daggerfall was designed around mechanics of being procedural based game in its core and today we have gone pretty far in that area of programming, logic and complexity. Im sure that you are aware that you can do much more complex things with procedural generation and to retain good gameplay and graphics with ease, in present time.

My proposal is this – as you can see from my examples, my idea is just to make environmental models a little bit more complex with new hand painted textures, retaining original design of models and color pallets. Each house can be made from simple parts which would have hard points on them, so they can fit and click together like a lego blocks. This would be true for all environmental models, exteriors and interiors. For map/terrain blocks textures placement, you can do similar things, by using procedural generated alphas (projected by curves) to guide texture placements and maybe some terrain modifiers to cut through it, so you can have better representation of rivers for example (nothing too fancy . Essentially Daggerfall was not a big game and Ive checked the image tool - It can be done today with relative ease.

Also, my proposal is to change FPS sprite weapons and actions with the actual 3D models. And to replace/add characters into 3D...but that would be next phase (also can be done).

To sum up – Daggerfall's style is stylized (so, not photorealistic) hand painted procedural adventure and heavy in atmosphere (snow, rain, fog, mud, sand storms, lighting, sun, overcast) in broad/huge world of its own, with original color palette. This is what is needed to be preserved and build upon to retain its old charm. You can look at it like sort of “super mod”.

Also, it would be great if we could focus efforts in a single point. Looking from some distance, all work here is so much dispersed. Im not trying to bash anyone (so not my intent really), just talking from my professional experience point and that it would be great to infuse a little bit more focus and practicality/organization to the project.

PS – in my 3d environment examples the textures Ive used are not mine. Ive just used the ones Ive found to illustrate better my proposal and idea. But similar hand painted texturing can be done easily. (house, tavern and fallenTree models are mine as well fallen tree texture).

PSS – for the good procedural environment (exteriors/interiors) there is great example for the UE4 called “Dungeon Architect”.

I think PatchyPegleg's textures are really nice.
And i think, StoneFrog's.

Yeah, Im afraid you've missed my point completely. Please read my first post. Among other core things, I was talking about retaining style and color palette of the original, but giving it new redo/overhaul.

Im not here to bash other people efforts, nor to seek gratification and appreciation for my own work, Im to old for that. Im here to politely ask if there are some people who liked my proposal and felt similary on this subjects as I have. People who are possibly interested enough, willing and able to kickstart that particular idea technically. Since obviously making a video game is an team effort and one man cant do much alone. I am talking about big mod obviously and Gavin was kind enough to point me to this part of the forum, after I've explained my proposal to him.

We all here feel the same considering Daggerfall unity project and that is -we all want it to end up great and worthy of the original. And I would add from my part of vision -bringing present day programming achievements and quality HD look.

Welcome! I tested your proofs of concept. Your choice of textures is fantastic. It's not Daggerfall, I will say, but I believe it's superior. It reminds me of the Morrowind Overhaul mods, which give a much more realistic representation than Morrowind did (1)(2). (This video is the best resource I can find to show the comparison.) I don't say yes to every graphical style, but I think this one can definitely work.

Jay_H wrote:Welcome! I tested your proofs of concept. Your choice of textures is fantastic. It's not Daggerfall, I will say, but I believe it's superior. It reminds me of the Morrowind Overhaul mods, which give a much more realistic representation than Morrowind did (1)(2). (This video is the best resource I can find to show the comparison.) I don't say yes to every graphical style, but I think this one can definitely work.

Hi,

Yeah sry for that, Ive used Diablo 3 textures lol. They are not realistic as you would say, but they are pretty well painted to represent texture of wood, plaster, rock, mud, grass etc. Because I didnt wanted to waste too much time, I had to use them to illustrate my idea. I would paint them similar but more in tradition of Daggerfall original textures and color palettes (like those two simple texture examples that I did) -yeah they ended up being maybe too much stylized, simple and cartoonish, but again, just wanted to do demo (or proof of concept as youve said as quickest as possible and to not waste too much time.

I could write whole thesis on why people still today like pixelated textures and art. But in short, short version -its because pixels, or low resolution, unintentionally acts like traditional impressionistic art style, which we as humans are drawn to it.

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Im rambling on again lol, anw, my proposal actually needs help of coders for the most part. So Im asking this time, anyone with some solid coding skills, and who likes my idea, to let me know if they are interested in helping it take it of the ground. I can do most of artwork myself for the starters (3D/2D) and see how it will go. Later if everything goes well I can ask some artist friends who already worked on world titles before.